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Izuku’s eyes keep drifting toward Ochako across the room, the sconce on the wall beyond her and the joy that sits heavy over the room lighting her profile. She glows with it, laughing with the back of her hand pressed to her mouth at something that has Mina howling and clutching her stomach, and Ochako’s eyes are scrunched closed, and Izuku can’t hear the sound of her voice overtop the clamoring of his classmates. Everything around him is buzzing. An absent smile tugs on the patch of scar tissue marring his cheek; he hides it behind a bite of food.
His classmates all wore their street clothes for this, a far cry from the pressed, white-and-green uniforms and red ties he still sees when he thinks of them. It’s been eight years, but he still thinks of his class as teenagers, and sometimes, when Izuku’s sitting at his own desk at the front of a classroom, he hears the door open and turns, thinking it’ll be Kirishima barrelling into the room a split second after the bell has rung, Kaminari and Mina hot on his heels with their homework half-finished and wrinkled from getting lost in the chaos of their school bags. It’s never them, only ever his own students, who look much younger than Izuku remembers being while studying under Aizawa’s tutelage.
None of them are kids anymore, and they haven’t been for a long time—the alcohol buzzing behind Izuku’s tongue and on Todorki’s breath when he’d hugged him in greeting are testament enough to that, let alone the flush of it over Iida’s face and the several empty bottles of sake in the aisles between the many tables of the old class 1-A. Izuku wants to burst with the joy of having grown up with these people around him, even as he watches Ochako from afar and hopes she turns and meets his gaze—and hopes, at the same time, that she never notices him looking, or maybe she notices but doesn’t acknowledge it.
There’s too much he never said to her when they were kids, when he knew exactly what she was going through during the war.
Izuku’s still staring at Ochako when a twitch of movement in his peripherals catches his attention. Kacchan slams down his cup and heaves himself up off his cushion.
“Bathroom,” he gruffs at Kirishima across the table, but he knocks his scarred knuckles against Izuku’s shoulder on his way past, an intentional movement that has Izuku taking a sip of his own drink to hide.
“Old man over here can’t keep his alcohol,” Mineta crows and jerks his thumb over his shoulder as Kacchan stumbles on the edge of his wayward cushion. “Drunk already?” Mineta chokes on a braying cackle that isn’t so different from when they were in school together.
“Fuck off, Grape Head,” Kacchan grouses and flips him off without turning around, which also isn’t so different from when they were in school. He slouches off down the hallway with the ‘Restrooms’ sign above it.
There is, in fact, a slight sway to his walk. Izuku titters to himself; Kacchan got his metabolism from his mother, who gets wine drunk with Izuku’s own mother every weekend and ends up cooing and crying over baby pictures of both Izuku and Katsuki after only two-and-a-half glasses.
Izuku’s been dragged into Wine Night enough times to be intimately aware of the Bakugou family’s alcohol tolerance, or lack-thereof.
“Jeez,” Mineta continues as Kacchan’s back disappears down the hall, “he’s got all crotchety since he dropped in ratings.” Izuku turns in time to see him roll his eyes.
“The darkness of perceived failure,” Tokoyami muses, sipping sagely at his own drink, which is dark and swirling.
“Nah, man, he doesn’t see his ranking as a failure,” Kirishima insists, talking a decibel or two too loud, even with the noise of the room around them. He sits up on his knees and all but crawls over the table, narrowly dodging knocking over Kacchan’s cup in his enthusiasm to join the conversation. “Bro just had other priorities for a while, am-I-right?” Kirishima shoots a clumsy wink at Izuku.
Izuku blinks and furrows his brows.
“What do you mean, Kirishima? What else was he working on?” Izuku tries to think back to each time he’s seen Kacchan’s name mentioned in the news in the last eight years, all of the alerts Izuku has set for mentions of him on internet forums. He’s seen some recent speculation about Dynamight possibly retiring (not so early in his career, Izuku thinks) or opening his own agency (more plausible), some complaints that Dynamight’s current agency has been pushing him to the side in favor of a new debuting hero (Izuku agrees with these complaints, since Kacchan is definitely still in his prime and shouldn’t be made to feel second-rate), but nothing would be more important than working toward a better ranking for someone like Kacchan, who has wanted to be the best for as long as Izuku can remember.
In fact, Kacchan is up there with the top-five in terms of rescues and take-down statistics, Izuku checks weekly and has his stats memorized by now, so the only thing keeping him from breaking back into the top of the rankings is his lack of public appearances in the last few years. He’d debuted at number four, so it should’ve been easy to climb to number one, especially with a personality as tenacious as Kacchan’s, but after the first year of mainstream hero work, he instead became known for his single-mindedness when it came to everything involved in being a hero other than the things he’d deemed trivial. He cared little for fan meet-ups, which Shouto excelled at somehow, and blew off most of his interviews, which Kirishima took on at every chance, and he fired his merch team, who worked with Monoma afterward. Triviality, to Kacchan, seemed to be the things that brought in less money than frequent patrols and raids did, and the public caught onto this. Some said he was in heroism for the money; others said it was about taking out his aggression on other human beings.
So, Kacchan’s ranking fell, while the others in the class climbed.
It’s something Izuku’s never understood. Kacchan understands the value of every part of heroism, Izuku knows. He’s never been motivated by money, he hadn’t cared about the bravado of being a hero by the time he graduated, and he wouldn’t give up so easily as to let himself fall to 15th in the rankings—not that Izuku isn’t proud of him, he absolutely is! Even if Kacchan wasn’t ranked and had never ranked, Izuku would cheer him on (he’d made sure to buy one of everything from Kacchan’s first and only merch drop, way back when he’d started out, when Izuku was living off his stipend from U.A.).
But, the Kacchan he knows wouldn’t sit back and let himself take 15th.
“Oh, man,” Kirishima mumbles, sitting back on his heels and rubbing the back of his head. “He’d be pissed if he knew I said anything.”
“What?” Izuku asks, more confused than he’d been while reading one of his student’s essays last week—the assignment had been to write about the cardinal rules of heroism, and the student had written an entire paper on cardinal directions. “What else was he working on? I don’t understand—it’s just not like him to let something else get in the way of being number one…I know I’ve been sort of out of the loop, you know, since I’m not a hero like you guys—”
“You’re totally a hero, Mido-bro!” Kirishima insists, suddenly teary-eyed. His lip wobbles around his pointy teeth, and Todoroki, from his hunched-over position on the cushion across from Izuku, reaches over to pat him clumsily on the back. He misjudges the distance at first, pats the air, and then recalculates to comfort Kirishima.
Izuku suspects the drinks Kaminari has been handing Todoroki all night have been stronger than he let on, all in an attempt to get some embarrassing pictures of the number-two hero. Unfortunately for him, it seems Todoroki is a sleepy-eyed drunk, rather than one who would start trying to strip out of his clothes, as Kaminari has taken to doing, if the lack of his overshirt and left sock is anything to go by.
“My hero,” Todoroki echoes in an unintelligible mumble.
“Will someone please just tell me what’s going on? What’s wrong with Kacchan?” Izuku warbles. He runs a hand over his hair and then reaches down to loosen his tie. Todoroki beckons him to lean in closer with the swipe of one finger, the other hand still patting absently at Kirishima like a dog. Kirishima leans into it and shakes his head to himself like he can’t believe Izuku.
Izuku leans in, unwilling to miss whatever Todoroki has to say.
“He was working for you,” he says. He lays his head down in the cradle of his arm, hunched over the table. His short hair narrowly misses dipping into an open container of soy sauce, which Izuku kindly scoots down the table.
“For me?” Izuku questions, falling back into his seat. “I don’t understand. I never hired him for anything, and I certainly never paid him for anything.”
“He was working toward your suit,” Todoroki tells him without lifting his head up off the table. “He worked the hardest out of anyone. He worked like there was nothing else worth doing without you.”
Izuku thinks he must be misunderstanding; the din of the room must be distorting Todoroki’s meaning. Still, his heart drops to his stomach. He puts down his drink, feels like he’ll be hunched over the plant in the corner of the room if he takes another sip of it.
He might throw up even without another sip, without the spinning nausea of being too drunk. He’s not even tipsy, had been sipping his drink slowly so he could be sure to remember every second of being around his old classmates.
He’s sure he couldn’t forget this moment, even if he was drunk.
“It’s because of me?” Izuku whispers, but no one seems to hear him. It’s his fault Kacchan hasn’t reached his goal and has fallen further away from it in the last four years. It’s his fault.
Izuku scrambles to his feet, nearly tripping in his haste. He throws down a few thousand yen, hopes it covers his bill.
“Oh, Izuku!” Ochako calls from her seat, the flush of alcohol dusting over her face. She waves, as if to beckon him over, but he shakes his head, feeling sick at himself, and jerks his head at the door with a ‘what can you do?’ sort of shrug, trying to convey that he needs to leave before he has a meltdown in front of everyone who he wants to keep having a good night.
He turns on his heel before he can see the look on Ochako’s face, and he runs square into someone else, a soft, dark shirt and a rumbling noise of surprise.
It’s Kacchan, always Kacchan, drawing him in, catching him even when Izuku is about to bowl him over.
“Oi, Izuku,” Kacchan says, blinking drunkenly down at him. He’s only been Deku when he’s in the suit, lately, so it must mean something selfish and parasitic. He wishes Kacchan would call him Deku now, if that’s the case. “You’re goin’ already?”
“I—um,” Izuku stumbles. “I have to be up early—for work, to teach. Can’t be—I have to set a good example for my students, so…I have to go, now.” He breathes through his mouth to avoid the sting of tears in the back of his sinuses. If he cries now, Kacchan will never let him go; Izuku can’t keep holding him back.
“You want me to walk you home, nerd?” Kacchan asks, so genuine and soft in his t-shirt and shorts and slight slurring. Izuku shakes his head with a laugh he hopes doesn’t sound as watery as it feels.
“No, no, Kacchan,” he murmurs with a smile, waving Kacchan off. “You go on without me. I’ll be okay.” Kacchan shrugs with one shoulder, nods, and ambles past to return to his seat, where he immediately starts shouting at Kirishima to stop sulking. Izuku watches him go, and then he leaves.
He walks the whole way home, instead of taking the train, and he keeps himself awake that night by scrolling on every forum he can find about Dynamight’s explosive entry onto the hero rankings and his subsequent downfall, feeling worse at every comment and tweet and upvote.
He wonders what people would think of him if they knew he was the parasite keeping Kacchan from becoming who he’s always dreamed of being.
~*~
Izuku doesn’t go out in the suit for the next two weeks. He sees it in his closet, the unassuming briefcase not unlike the one he takes to U.A. with him everyday, which carries his teacher I.D. and all the assignments he’s putting off grading, but it haunts him.
Being a hero is sort of like being an addict, Izuku thinks; he craved it all the time, before the suit, even after having it taken from him cold-turkey all those years ago. Now, with his vice living under the same roof as him, he sits on his couch in the dark and thinks about it, imagines the feeling of sliding the gloves on and zipping up the back of the suit and the added weight on his shoes. He barely eats, barely sleeps. When he does, he dreams about flying through the air and explosions nearby, a satisfied cackle that feels like sugar melting on his tongue to get rid of a nasty bout of hiccups.
He doesn’t let himself give in. The briefcase collects dust, but he doesn’t move it to a higher shelf, or anywhere where it would be out of sight. It feels a little like a punishment, keeping it in reach but holding himself back, which is, of course, the point.
He’s never been one to waste a gift—he proved as much to All Might and the rest of the world back in high school—but he can’t imagine being Kacchan and seeing the reason he couldn’t achieve his dreams walking around in a cape like nothing’s wrong, like nothing’s changed. If he keeps the suit packed away, keeps up the self-flagellation, Izuku thinks, maybe he can keep Kacchan from figuring out what Izuku did to him. Even after all of this, Izuku is selfish; he doesn’t think he could stand it if Kacchan comes to resent him.
So, Izuku wakes up every morning, thinks about the briefcase in his closet. He gets ready for work, drinks coffee and doesn’t eat breakfast, thinks about the suit. He commutes to work, sitting amidst the other working class citizens of the city and wondering if he can remember the feeling of the wind in his hair when he’s going top-speeds, totally in control of himself. He teaches, and for the first time since he started, his heart’s not in it. He sits in the corner of the teachers’ lounge on his lunch break, staring out the window as his coworkers murmur nearby. He goes home, sits on his couch without turning on any of the lights, and feels the briefcase’s siren’s call. He goes to sleep, dreams about Tenko and the stinging power of Black Whip. He wakes up feeling like he’s missing some part of himself, something that’s carved out and managed to scar over without filling itself back in, and he thinks about that fucking briefcase.
For two weeks, he goes on like this. His students call him Midoriya-sensei. His coworkers call him Midoriya. His mom calls him Izuku. No one ever calls him Deku.
Not until Kacchan storms into the teachers’ lounge, his brows furrowed into a firm wrinkle over the sharp bridge of his nose. He slams the door on his way in, interrupting Izuku’s schedule of staring aimlessly out of the window and tapping his fingers on his knee until the end of the period.
“Wha—acchan?” Izuku greets, scrambling to press himself into the corner of the couch as Kacchan hones his sight on him like a laser-seeking missile. “What are you doing here? You shouldn’t—I mean, you can’t—I mean.” Izuku presses his lips together to cut off the verbal equivalent of falling head-over-ass down the stairs. Kacchan heaves out a breath through his nose like a bull approaching a matador who’s dressed only in the brightest, most garish shade of red out there. Izuku wonders, briefly, if today is the day he dies.
“Get up,” Kacchan demands, standing at the end of the couch.
“Why?” Izuku demands right back. He crosses his arms over his chest and exudes defiance. It’s been a long while since Izuku did whatever Kacchan told him to do, and he won’t be bossed around in his place of work.
“Get up,” Kacchan bosses again, so Izuku gets up. He keeps his arms crossed, though, as he follows Kacchan out of the lounge and into the hallway. Kacchan’s shoulders are a tense line in front of him the whole way through U.A. His fists clench and unclench at his sides, like they do when he’s itching for a fight, but Izuku knows he knows the direction of the fighting grounds, the layout of the campus hasn’t changed at all in the last eight years. Katsuki is not going toward the grounds—he’s going toward the front gates, and Izuku follows at his heels, just like always.
“What’s wrong, Kacchan?” Izuku asks when they get to the gates. Kacchan stands beyond the edges of the campus with his back to Izuku, who keeps on the inside of the gates. “You don’t usually kidnap me like this,” he adds with a nervous, tittering laugh.
“We’re going to lunch, Izuku,” Kacchan says, his voice measured out like he’s reciting a script or trying not to flip his lid. Maybe both. He turns so Izuku can just see his profile, the long, silvery scar running over his cheekbone. It reminds him of that dinner a few weeks ago, looking at “That ramen place you like—liked. Or, if you don’t like it anymore, we can go somewhere else. I, um. I guess I don’t know what places you like anymore.”
Kacchan’s ears color red, and he glances away again.
“Kacchan, what?” Izuku implores. He’s getting tired of feeling lost in conversations regarding Kacchan lately; it’s not something he’s familiar with, after living in Kacchan’s back pocket for so much of their lives. Maybe it’s a side effect of falling out of that pocket after high school. He shakes his head. “I still like that ramen place. Let’s go there.”
Kacchan nods to himself and stuffs his clenched fists into the pockets of his baggy pants, slouching his way toward a sleek, black car parked not far away. It looks like the car Kacchan pointed at in a magazine when they were kids, proclaiming he would drive it one day. Then, when Izuku asked if he could drive it too (after Kacchan, of course), Kacchan denied him, saying he wouldn’t just drive the car, but he would own it, too. His dream car, a car fit for the top hero in the country.
The lights on it blink, and Izuku looks around for the owner, wondering if he could ask if Kacchan could take a look at it, maybe. Kacchan gets shy about that sort of thing, or he did when they were kids, but he’s gotta be itching to take a look around the undoubtedly sleek interior of the car.
“You just gonna stand there, or are you gonna get the hell in, nerd?” Kacchan asks, standing at the driver’s side door.
“Your car?” Izuku squeaks, gawking. “This is your car?”
“What the hell about it?” Kacchan grouses, but his ears are still pink at the tips, and it extends over the height of his cheekbones.
“Kacchan, this is—this is your car?” Izuku marvels as he steps closer, then opens the passenger door, sticking his head inside to gawk at the tan leather of the seats, the blinking buttons and screens on the dash, the low-set driver’s seat which Kacchan slides into, looking as comfortable as ever.
“Yeah, paid for with my own money, so it’s my fuckin’ car, which I’d like you to get into instead of just staring at it,” he says, one of his brows arched. He keeps one hand on the wheel and taps the fingers of the other one on the gear shift, impatient. “You get a whole day for your lunch break, now, or are you just gonna waste it looking around like an idiot?”
Izuku scrambles to duck into the car, taking all of it in. He’s so engrossed in committing every detail of the car to memory that he forgets to buckle until he looks over and sees Kacchan’s unimpressed look.
“What?” Izuku questions, defensive. “It’s a nice car, I know you know that.”
“A car that won’t be moving until you fucking buckle up, nerd,” Kacchan insists. “It’s the law.” Izuku makes an understanding noise and buckles, missing the latch a few times with how his hands shake.
Kacchan drives them to the ramen place in the next district over without talking or turning on the radio, which leaves Izuku to pick at the skin around his finger nails and chew on his lip to keep himself from saying something stupid or rambling. Who knows if Kacchan will be so lenient about his mumbling all these years later, when Izuku should have grown out of the habit—when Kacchan has stuck his neck so far out under the guillotine for Izuku that he might as well start wearing an Elizabethan ruffle with his hero costume.
He parks smoothly without looking at Izuku, puts the car in park, and sighs. Kacchan leans forward until his forehead touches the top of the steering wheel, leaning him hunched over and looking more defeated in his posture than Izuku’s ever seen him.
“I was going to wait until after lunch to ask this shit,” Kacchan murmurs without sitting up, “but I can’t fucking focus on anything else.”
“What is it, Kacchan?” Izuku prompts, tilting his head to try to get a look at Kacchan’s face. He can’t see it around the slump of his shoulders and his blond spikes of hair. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not—it’s not fucking okay, Izuku,” Kacchan explodes, sitting up and slamming his hands over the steering wheel. He stares out the windshield before turning sharply in his seat. “Do you not like the suit, or something?”
Kacchan’s voice cracks in the middle of his sentence, a fault line that unmoors Izuku’s balance.
“I don’t understand.” Izuku reaches up to tug on the roots of his hair, like this is some sort of briefcase-obsession-induced nightmare. “This is about the suit?”
“Yes,” Kacchan insists, his voice pitched high and desperate. Then, “Yes—no, fucking—fuck the suit! I can get another one made, if you don’t like it.”
“I like the suit just fine, Kacchan,” Izuku says, but he’s so confused that it comes out flat.
“Do you just not want to be a hero anymore, then? What is it?” Kacchan asks, but it sounds like begging, like his entire existence hinges on Izuku’s answer.
He’s not sure what the right answer is, what Kacchan wants from him. He opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. No words come out. Kacchan brings a closed fist down on the top of the steering wheel, but the anger isn’t aimed at Izuku.
“Let’s just fucking—get lunch. Or whatever. Aizawa says you haven’t been eating enough.” He shakes his head and leaves Izuku in the car, slamming the door behind him but standing there, waiting for Izuku to get out and follow him into the ramen place.
They used to come here all the time in their third year. Caught the train from campus, an hour’s commute, brought homework and took up residence in a corner booth for hours until it closed and the busboys kicked them out. He always thought of it as their spot , a haven just for him and Kacchan, together.
Izuku hasn’t been back since they graduated, but it smells just like how he remembers it; seaweed, broth, and Kacchan next to him, gesturing for a table for two. They put them in a corner booth. Kacchan is tense again, and Izuku’s still wondering what the right answer is.
Kacchan won’t look at him the whole time they order. He gets the same thing he did when they were teenagers, so Izuku does, too. Finally, Kacchan looks up and heaves a sigh like this whole time, he’s just been steeling himself, gathering courage.
Izuku’s never known Kacchan as needing to find bravery; he is bravery.
“You kept looking,” Kacchan starts, “at Round Face, at that reunion. Why?” It takes Izuku by surprise, that Kacchan needed bravery for this, that he would ask about it, that he noticed Izuku looking at her at all.
“I wanted to talk with her that night.” Izuku folds his straw wrapper into a square, unfolds it, does it again. “There’s a lot I’ve never said to her. I thought I would do it that night.”
“But you didn’t,” Kacchan points out. He doesn’t fiddle with anything on the table, not his hands or his shirt, or anything.
“No, I didn’t.” It embarrasses Izuku, Kacchan looking at him over the table. He’s not sure why. Kacchan says nothing at all for a long while, long enough that Izuku’s straw wrapper dissolves into shreds of crumpled paper between his sweaty fingers. Kacchan slides his own wrapper toward him with a calculating look.
“You haven’t gone out in the suit in two fucking weeks, Izuku,” Kacchan tells him, as if Izuku hasn’t been marking the days on his calendar, letting a piece of himself die a little with each cross.
“I can’t,” Izuku tells him, hopes that’s enough. With Kacchan, it’s never enough. Kacchan always presses, always urges Izuku to give more than he wants to, but he never complains, never when he’s giving it to Kacchan.
“Why the hell not?” Kacchan grips the edge of the table hard, so hard it might give away, and they’ll have to pay for the shop to buy a new one. What a way to make their return to their spot . “Is there something wrong with it?”
“No, no. Nothing’s wrong with it, Kacchan. Promise.” Izuku waves his hands in front of himself, placating. Kacchan shakes his head hard, decidedly un-placated.
“Then, why?” Izuku presses his lips into a thin, hard line and shakes his head. He feels himself falling apart from the inside, a little, and wishes Kacchan wouldn’t make him admit to all of his wrongdoings out loud.
Izuku is nothing if not selfish.
Their food comes, steaming bowls placed before them. Izuku’s cheeks are warm with steam, and they both bow their heads and break apart their chopsticks and eat without making any noise. Izuku wants to ask a million questions—where is Kacchan living, these days? Does he have a cat, maybe a dog? Who does he call after bad patrols? Why doesn’t he keep in touch with Izuku, is it because Izuku ruined his life? Does he hate him? But, in the end, Izuku doesn’t think he can take getting to know Kacchan all over again.
He doesn’t remember getting to know Kacchan in the first place, those awkward questions that are meant to fill in blanks until there are no blanks, anymore, only something irrevocably linked together, KacchanandDeku .
Kacchan pays, even when Izuku insists on splitting, or letting him pay.
“Kacchan, you’ve done enough for me, seriously,” Izuku says in their debate about paying and knows he found the exact wrong thing to say. Kacchan’s face shutters off, closed and stoic, and he takes the check off the table without another word. Izuku lets him pay, staring down at his hands in his lap.
They step into the street, and this is the moment, Izuku thinks, where Kacchan decides he has done enough for Izuku, has given enough for him, that he hates Izuku, resents him, never wants to see him again, even in passing. Izuku stays one step behind Kacchan, so he doesn’t have to see it play out on his face.
“You should talk to Round Face,” Kacchan tells him outside the restaurant. “She’ll appreciate it, I’m sure. Say all the shit you never said before, or whatever.”
“Maybe,” Izuku murmurs. Ochako couldn’t be further from his mind, now. They take a few more steps toward the car.
“I’m opening up my own agency,” Kacchan blurts, suddenly. His voice isn’t happy, his shoulders tense and closed off, and his eyes stay glued to the ground. He looks like a little kid, the same little kid Izuku dreamed of opening an agency with so many lifetimes ago.
Tears spring to Izuku’s eyes at his words.
“That’s—that’s really great, Kacchan,” Izuku says, and he means it. Kacchan stops walking, so Izuku steps up next to him without realizing, and then they’re toe-to-toe, so close Izuku doesn’t know who’s following who back to the car, anymore. He doesn’t even know if they’re going back to the car.
“Come with me, Izuku.” A tear drips onto Izuku’s cheek, the one unmarred by scarring.
“I don’t understand,” Izuku chokes out. He takes one step away, out of Kacchan’s space, his orbit. “Come with you, where?”
“I want your name on the agency, too,” Kacchan tells him, letting him step away, resigned. His hand twitches, like he might reach out, but he doesn’t. Izuku shakes his head, once, twice, at first, then so hard he might give himself whiplash. He scrubs at his cheeks with the backs of his hands, but the tears keep coming, pouring out of him like the rain that time Kacchan came and caught him and brought him home.
“I can’t, Kacchan,” he whispers. “I won’t.”
Kacchan’s lips part, a breath whooshing out of him. Relief, Izuku is sure—this offer, it was a childhood promise, not genuine intention. It can’t be what Kacchan wants, not after everything.
“Why the fuck not, Izuku?” he demands, and Izuku’s resolve crumbles. Even his own selfishness cannot save him, now.
“I ruined everything for you, Kacchan,” he shouts, tugging at his hair and letting the tears fall without interception from his rough hands. “You debuted, number four, you were so amazing—I watched that ranking ceremony from my couch, and I cheered so loud my neighbors called a noise complaint on me, and they hated me until I moved, but I didn’t care one bit because you were there, and your dream was in reach, and it would be so easy to take over the polls, get to number one.” Izuku heaves on a sob. “And then you stopped focusing on it, stopped selling merch or offering fan signings, and I was so confused, we were all so confused, because it wasn’t like you, and I was so scared for you, and the next year, you were 7th in the polls, and I still cheered so loud for you, I promise, I did. And the next year, you went off of all social media, never talked to any fans unless they cornered you, and you never did any interviews, and then you were 10th, and then you were 13th, and then—and then 14th, and 15th, and it’s all my fault. ” Izuku slaps his hand into his sternum hard enough that his heart stutters on a beat, his lungs struggle for air. “It’s my fault , Kacchan—I ruined it for you.”
“What the fuck are you talking about, you idiot?” Kacchan demands, his chest hitching like it does before he cries, that’s one thing Izuku knows hasn’t changed since the last time he knew Kacchan. “How was any of that your fault?”
“Kirishima and—and Todoroki told me,” he weeps. “You did it all for me, all the extra raids and patrols, and it was all for the suit, and that’s why you fell in the popularity polls. Everyone thought you were money-hungry, but it was just me, I was a parasite to you. I ruined it, I kept you from the dream you’ve had since we were kids, and I’ll always hate myself for it. Just a—I’m just a stupid fucking Deku. ” He spits it with vitriol, so much disdain it tastes like licking a copper pipe.
Kacchan says nothing for a long moment, and Izuku wonders if he’s only seeing all of Izuku’s wrongdoings now that he’s been told. Izuku opens his mouth to tell him he’ll just take the train back to campus, even though the hour-long ride will make him late for class, Kacchan won’t have to worry about the awkward ride back, but Kacchan interrupts him.
“I’ll fucking kill them,” he seethes, and when Izuku looks up from his shoes, Kacchan is crying, open and unabashed. He clutches at the front of his shirt, and he looks so much like the Kacchan Izuku fought with at Ground Beta in the middle of everything in their first year. God, they were kids. “Kirishima, and Todoroki, I’ll kill them for putting that shit in your head.”
“No, they didn’t—it’s not their fault,” Izuku insists. His breath hitches. “It’s nothing that wasn’t there for me to see, already. I’ve always been holding you back, since we were kids. You were right, back in middle school, you were right to hate me.”
“I didn’t know shit back then,” Kacchan says, sounding agonized, like Izuku is jabbing a hot poker into the sole of his foot with each word. “Never say I was right, I couldn’t have been more wrong, Izuku.”
“I can’t join your agency, Kacchan,” Izuku tells him again. The tears on his face are cooling, slowing with his resignation to the reality stretching out before him. “I’ll only hold you back, like I have been for the last eight years, and longer than that. You don’t have to worry about going on without me anymore.”
“Bull shit ,” Kacchan grits out, his jaw clenched hard enough that a vein in his forehead throbs. “Join me.”
He holds out his hand, the way he did when he beckoned Izuku to come on, to join the rest of them as heroes, when he gifted Izuku the suit. Izuku stares at the hand and trembles. Kacchan curls the hand into a fist and drops it to his side, growling in frustration.
“Izuku, fucking— look at me, ” he commands, so Izuku does. His face is blotchy, red from crying, but his brows are set in determination, the way they are before a big fight. “You have no idea what’s been happening for the last eight years. Hold me back?” Kacchan scoffs, runs a shaking hand over his hair, eyes glossy. “No, Izuku, you don’t fucking get it .”
“What is there to get, Kacchan?” Izuku challenges. Kacchan’s eye twitches.
“Here’s what’s to fucking get, asshole: there is no point in striving to be the best if you aren’t there next to me, okay? I only gave up my ranking, I only stopped caring about that shit, because there was no fucking point. I worked every day to get you one step closer to that goddamned suit, so we could be on top together. There was no other fucking option for me, okay? Never—there’s never been any other fucking option, Izuku, than the two of us, next to each other. Not you behind me, or me behind you, but us. Together, as the best.” Kacchan steps forward and pokes Izuku in the chest hard enough to make him stumble one step back, and Kacchan follows him in that, too. “So, no, you didn’t ruin everything, you made it possible. You were what I worked for every day for eight goddamn years , you pushed me forward, got me out of bed everyday, never held me back—what are you, fucking stupid?” Kacchan scoffs again, shakes his head.
“You’re just saying that,” Izuku denies, his voice quiet and weak.
“No, that’s the fuck of it all!” Kacchan throws his hands up. “I’m not just saying shit, I mean every fucking word of it. You, Deku—fuck, Izuku—you are my image of the world. I see you everywhere I look—I didn’t want to do merch anymore because I knew every shitty design would look better with your colors next to mine. I didn’t want to do fan meet-ups because I knew you’d be in parent-goddamn-teacher conferences, or getting snarked at by some fucking brat when everyone should really be bowing at your feet, clamoring to meet you, not some dickhead like me. I stopped doing interviews because I always thought stupid shit like ‘what would Deku say?’ when all I wanted was for you to be at my side, answering the stupid questions the fucking reporters ask so I didn’t have to, turning them into something meaningful instead of goddamn asinine.” Kacchan sniffles. “I bought my dream car because I hoped you’d see it, and you’d want me to—I dunno. Take you for a ride. I could teach you how to drive it, like you wanted to, when we were brats.” He wipes his hand over his face, paces away, then turns on his heel and stalks back toward Izuku. “You never held me back from my dreams, Izuku. I could’ve reached them just fine, either way, but they’re pointless, they mean nothing, if you’re not part of them. So never—never say that dumb fucking bullshit about holding me back, not ever again, you hear me?” He jabs a finger into Izuku’s chest again, weaker this time.
“I hear you,” Izuku echoes. Kacchan takes a step back, out of Izuku’s space.
“Fine,” he finishes. “What the fuck ever.” Kacchan swallows hard. Izuku watches his Adams’ apple bob. “So, if—if all of this, how things are now, with you not using the goddamn suit, and not wanting to be a hero, and me opening the agency without you—because I’m opening it either fucking way, asshole, be sure of that…”
“I wouldn’t expect anything else, Kacchan,” Izuku chuckles, congested but glowing from the inside.
“But, if you’re really fucking sure about it, beyond whatever fucked-up, untrue bullshit you think about yourself, then you tell me no, Deku— Izuku .” He waits, lips pursed, and Izuku says nothing. He averts his eyes, but he has never been able to lie to Kacchan. “Fucking—good.” Kacchan swallows hard again. He turns toward the car again, stalking away, and Izuku laughs, bright and loud in the middle of the street. He feels lighter than he has in years.
“You can call me Deku, you know,” he calls after Kacchan’s retreating back.
“Fuck you,” Kacchan replies. “Come get in the goddamn car, what kind of shitty teacher is late to their own fuckin’ class?”
“Ones who are trying to open up a joint hero agency,” Izuku declares, and he makes his way to the far side of the car, but neither of them get in, yet, just staring at each other over the hood of the car.
“Hey,” Kacchan starts, jaw working. “Shake on it, Deku?”
He thrusts one hand out over the space between them, fingers trembling.
“Of course, Kacchan,” Izuku promises. “Always.”
He reaches out and takes the hand extended to him, and he holds on tight.